Facilities such as malls, airports, train stations, and even smaller establishments such as grocery stores, typically have fixtures, such as display shelves, booths, refrigerated cabinets and counters, that must be accessible, attractive and convenient to the consumer, yet also must be protected from damage from a constant onslaught of customers, not to mention employees, cleaning crews and maintenance personnel. The potential for repeated, costly damage to fixtures from people, some of whom may be relatively unskilled or inattentive, yet operating heavy equipment or shopping carts, is ever present.
A grocery store, for example, often has low, open refrigeration cabinets for display of perishable goods such as dairy products, meat and fish. Behind the lightweight sheet metal facades of these cabinets lies delicate internals—compressors, condensers, cooling coils, and associated control circuitry such as thermostats and temperature sensors—that are required to refrigerate the goods. The facade provides minimal protection, and there are many opportunities for damage. A careless shopper with a full shopping cart, or a stock boy with a heavily loaded pallet cart (which can weigh upwards of 1000 pounds), or cleaning person operating a self-propelled industrial floor cleaner, can, via one careless collision, do damage to the cabinet. Particularly vulnerable are the cooling coils, which are routed throughout the cabinet and which contain a volatile and expensive refrigerant. Even if the internals are not damaged, the appearance of the cabinet can, over time, suffer considerably. Fixtures are often designed, not as industrial fortresses, but as an aesthetically pleasing and convenient part of a total package for marketing goods. Yet protection is a must, if costly repairs are to be avoided. Similar considerations apply to less sophisticated fixtures, such as checkout counter, and wall corners. Constant bumping from a vacuum cleaner can leave dings, dents, and gouges that are unsightly, necessitating constant and tedious minor repairs.
Known in the art are protective rails and corner guards installed about the periphery of a fixture or structure. Rails typically comprise a base member incorporating an abrasion-resistant plastic strip that is available in many colors for matching the surrounding color scheme. Often, floor mounted base rails are mounted approximately 5″ to 8″ above a floor, and are removable. Rails are not limited to installation in floors, however, and can dispose about, or attached to, a structure so as to best protect the structure from damage. For example, a rail system can be attached to a wall or other structure. Rail systems are typically modular, and may have a limited number of lengths of straight sections and of curvatures of corner sections available. A particular rail system for protecting a structure or fixture is built-up from available modular rail sections and corners. One example of a known protection system is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,149,569, issued on Sep. 22, 1992 to David S. McCue, and herein incorporated by reference.
Corner guards present greater difficulties. Typically, a limited number of pre-molded corner guards are available as corners are the most frequently struck part of display case protection They often abrade and become unsightly from the constant collision and scraping.
One of the most frustrating conditions with respect to corner guards designed to protect refrigerated cabinets, counters and the like is the initial positioning and installation of the guard. Contemporary art guards rely upon holes previously drilled and positioned into a floor covering such as but not limited to concrete/tile. The predrilled holes must align perfectly with positioning bars permanently attached to the corner guard. Should the holes and positioning bars not be so aligned the guard is rendered virtually useless until such time as the holes are filled and then redrilled to accommodate the predetermined distancing consistent with the positioning bars connection/attachment to the corner guard. A further detriment to contemporary corner guards is the material from which they are typically constructed. Such material is usually a resilient rubberized material susceptible to dings, cuts, scratches, and other contributing factors, which contribute to a less than desirable aesthetic presentation.
Accordingly, it is an object of the present invention to provide a robust fixture protection system that withstands collisions with objects.
It is another object of the present invention to provide a corner for a fixture protection system that is less susceptible to abrasion and damage.
Yet a further object of the present invention is to provide a fixture protection system that lessens the likelihood of damage to protective members of the system or to an object that collides therewith.
A further object of the present invention is to disclose and claim a display case protection device, which is adaptable to positioning within misaligned predrilled accommodations.
Yet another object of the present invention is to disclose and claim a display protection assembly, which is adaptable to a multiplicity of applications and may be configured to accommodate a variable height/width positioning requirement.
An object of the present invention is to disclose and claim a display case protection device comprised of a material impervious to unintentional or inadvertent bumping and scraping